Tonya Hurley_Ghostgirl_03 (14 page)

The fact that Damen, however unwittingly, just called her out on it really hurt. He knew her weaknesses and he should have known better than to expose them, no matter how angry she made him. Maybe, she thought, he did know better and was finally being honest.
“I guess I’m just not good enough,” Scarlet exhaled. “For you.”
Her comment spoke volumes. It wasn’t about the song at all. It was about everything else. The way she looked, the way she dressed, the things she liked or didn’t. None of it was good enough for him. At least that’s how she’d been feeling, and now she’d said it.
He moved in to hug her, but she tightened up and turned away.
Frustrated with her and with himself, he decided he’d had enough.
“I don’t think this is working,” Damen said. “Maybe we shouldn’t be together after all.”
Scarlet was surprised at how much hearing him say that hurt. She’d been pretty much pushing him in that direction, but now that he was the one to say it, to make it real, it broke her heart.
“Why don’t you go back where you belong,” Scarlet said. “And I’ll stay where I belong.”
Where exactly she meant, Damen didn’t have a clue. Back to work, back to college, or back to his life before her? Maybe all of the above.
“Yeah, maybe you’re right,” he said, stunning her even further. “Maybe I just don’t belong with you.”
She thought they might not be good for each other, but deep down she just wanted him to convince her that they were, like he always had before.
“Here, here’s a note that I wrote to you explaining things,” he said, handing her the piece of paper he had slaved over. “You can read it or not. It’s up to you,” he mumbled as he walked away.
Scarlet took the note out of his hand, stared at it, and then set it on the nightstand, next to her belongings. And there it stayed—unread.
Chapter 17 Pretty Girls Make Graves
I always fall in love with someone who looks the way I wish that I could be
—John Cale
Final exam.
We tend to measure lives and love the same way—by how long they last. For most of us, the longer the better. But a short life can make a big impact just as a short-lived romance can leave a lasting impression. In the end, it’s not the time we spend but how we spend the time that truly tells our story.
Petula thought that maybe once she got really into it, her excitement, her rush would kick in, but as of this moment, she wasn’t really feeling it. CoCo had done her best to rummage through the piles, assembling beautifully color-coordinated combinations for Petula to stumble upon. Any top fashion editor would spontaneously combust at the sight of these outfits, but they didn’t even rug-shock Petula.
For the first time, she didn’t notice colors or cuts. She felt as if nothing mattered anymore. Her life was over. So maybe The Wendys were right; maybe she was crazy. The only compulsion she was feeling now was to pull up a cardboard box and catnap on the curb.
Just like the destitute she had inexplicably committed to serve, Petula was an outcast. Shunned. All that she had strived to be was now undone, and despite all the blatant paranoia exhibited by The Wendys and the plotting by Darcy, it was her own fault. This was particularly distressing for Petula since up until now, the only purpose for a good, hard look in the mirror had been to check for flyaways. After all, it was much easier, she was learning, to assign blame than to assume it.
In the end, she reckoned, popularity was a temporary condition—a virus that bounces like the flu bug, predominantly to those made susceptible by their winning gene pools. The strength of each strain is determined by the insecurity, desperation, and sheer number of those hoping to acquire it.
Petula figured that was why high school lasted only four years, maybe five, in her case. Popularity fatigue, even immunity, was bound to set in among the masses after that. All this philosophizing and self-recrimination was making her head hurt, and Petula wanted to call it a day. She wanted to get back in her car, go home, and beg for her old life back. But, something, or someone, wasn’t letting her.
CoCo didn’t really care much about helping the needy, or Petula for that matter. But she did care a lot about clothes, and she was the first to realize that overthrowing Petula was just a smoke screen for Darcy. Her real goal, CoCo surmised, was to demoralize Petula into giving up her fashion moonlighting altogether, leaving the destitute to their understyled and hopeless existence. CoCo was literally providing moral support to keep that from happening. On a scale of global problems, it was a very minor affair, but any increase in the misery index, CoCo felt, must be fought. This, after all, was Markov’s point.
In almost a stupor, Petula grabbed some men’s outfits and hit the streets once again, with CoCo trailing close behind. As she drove them down to the dreary destination, she continued to berate herself out loud, beating herself up emotionally. Petula was fine with change, as long as it was of the cosmetic variety. Tampering with whatever was on the inside had been strictly forbidden. Until recently.
Petula double-parked, picked up her sack of clothing, and headed for the nearest corrugated shanty. She wasn’t being lazy. CoCo had seen something, actually someone, at that location who’d caught her attention on her last few visits, and she was determined to guide Petula there. As they drew nearer, Petula noticed a rustling under the garbage-festooned box and heard a few loud grunts. She had yet to see any definite proof that the source of the movement was human, but she was strangely unafraid. She felt protected.
“Hello?” Petula said.
No one answered her.
“Hey!” Petula screeched, kicking at the box and demanding to be charitable.
“What do you want?” the heap said in a grouchy voice.
It was definitely a male voice.
“Now, that’s a good question, one that I’ve been asking myself over and over again for the past few months,” she said. “What about you? What do you want?”
The homeless person started breaking out of his handout-clothing cocoon.
“I want to be left alone,” he muttered while freeing himself from the poly-blend cloaking his head. “Not dragged into your internal monologue.”
As the clothes fell away from his face, his eyes met with Petula’s. They were crystal blue and Petula couldn’t help but swim in them.
“You’re…,” she began, “young.”
“There’s no age requirement for being homeless, as far as I know,” he said.
He looked more movie-set dirty than filthy, Petula observed, as if some makeup assistant, rather than a hard-knock life, had dusted him down. CoCo stood and stared proudly as a look of accomplishment washed over her face.
“What are you doing here?” she asked. “You don’t really look like you belong.”
“I should ask you the same,” he replied.
She didn’t really have an answer for him, and so she never got one from him.
“We must be around the same age,” she said.
“Yeah, we’ve got that in common,” he said.
“I’m sure we have more than just that in common,” Petula said.
“Yeah, like what?”
“We both worry about clothes,” she said, thinking fast. “I worry that I have the latest and the hottest pieces, and you, well, you worry that you have… any.”
“I guess that’s something,” he said, smiling slightly.
“Hey, your teeth are really white,” she said, taken aback by his shiny grin. “Like, professional white.”
The guy looked more than embarrassed by the compliment.
One thing about homeless people that was hard for Petula to take was their lack of dental hygiene, and there was nothing Petula hated more than butterteeth. She even kept a Baggie of whitening strips and travel-size toothbrushes in her purse to help them combat their fuzzy tooth sweaters.
“These are for you,” Petula said, eyeing him as she handed over the jackets, shirts, and suit pants she’d pilfered from her guest-room closet. “I think they’ll fit.”
Petula didn’t just think it; she knew it. She was an expert at evaluating body types.
“Thanks,” he said shyly, as if he were taking something he didn’t deserve. “Now if you’ll excuse me.”
Just as he began to limp away Petula called out to him.
“I’m Petula, by the way,” she said, pursing her lips and quickly slipping on a latex surgical glove as she thrust her hand outward to greet him.
“Tate,” he said, grabbing her forearm and squeezing. “Nice to meet you.”
Petula saw that he wasn’t actually hurt. He was faking his limp. She could tell because she’d “come down” with homeless-leg syndrome occasionally herself whenever she exited her car in a handicapped space at the mall. Between his faux gimp and the pearly whites, Petula thought something didn’t quite compute.
As she watched them say their awkward goodbyes and Petula started back to her car, CoCo was startled by the pay phone ringing behind her. She looked around to see if anyone else heard it, but then noticed the out-of-order sticker on the dial. She decided it could only be for her. Ever the neat and clean freak, she balked at touching the receiver and instinctively used the cuff of her sleeve to cover her hand as she picked up the phone. CoCo was a creature of habit and death had changed very little for her.
“Showroom,” CoCo answered firmly.
“CoCo, it’s Gary.”
“I’m just in the middle of something, darling,” CoCo said hurriedly. “Can I get right back to you?”
“You are wanted at the office,” he advised.
“But what about Petula?” CoCo began to ask.
The click in her ear signaled the end of the connection and the conversation. CoCo watched in frustration as Petula headed toward her car and sped off, slowly fading from view.
Charlotte was looking for a way out, literally. She headed to Hawthorne and the intake office with Pam and Prue following behind anxiously. The last time she was here it was to save Petula. This time, Charlotte thought, it was to save herself.
“I’m going back,” Charlotte said as she grabbed for the office door.
“What do you mean you’re going back?” Pam asked, using her foot as a doorstopper.
“You can’t go back until you’re called,” Prue added.
“Everything is going wrong,” Charlotte said. “There’s no point staying.”
“But that’s why we’re here,” Pam scolded. “To make things better.”
“We’re making things worse,” Charlotte argued. “For the living and ourselves! Maybe we failed.”
Pam and Prue didn’t respond. It was something they’d been thinking, as well, but were not quite willing to admit.
“Don’t be so self-absorbed,” Prue finally shot back. “Just because you and Eric might not work out, doesn’t mean that nothing here will.”
Charlotte bristled at the criticism, not just because she was angry with her friends, but because they had a point. Being back always brought out the pessimist in her, and this time was no exception.
“It’s not just about me and Eric,” Charlotte said. “Everyone is lonely and miserable, except, of course, The Wendys.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Pam asked.
“It means that the two people who deserve happiness the least are getting exactly what they always wanted,” Charlotte scolded. “Nice work.”
“That’s not fair, Charlotte,” Pam said. “We’re all trying.”
“As long as we’re here, there’s still work to be done,” Prue said, frustrated. “Get a grip.”
“Okay, I will,” Charlotte said, gripping the door handle. “Get out of my way.”
Pam stood aside and the door opened. It was the same as it was the first day she arrived there. Cold and spare. She made her way to the counter and took a number. There was the same secretary, the one who didn’t look up, sitting behind the desk in her same funeral home attire with the casket-ready ruffled blouse Charlotte wouldn’t have been caught dead or alive wearing.
“Sit down and I’ll call your name,” she said.
Charlotte was tempted to say hello, but the secretary didn’t seem to recognize her. Not surprising, Charlotte thought, since she processed so many souls.
“We can’t let you do this,” Pam argued. “It’s just not right.”
“It is right for me,” Charlotte insisted.
The threesome continued their argument as they walked over to the bench, oblivious to the fact that there was someone else in the room. A girl, nervous and coiled up in the corner.
“They should really play better music in this place,” Pam said, trying to make small talk.
The girl didn’t look up. She was too afraid. They could certainly relate to that and put their differences aside for the moment to reach out to the new arrival. It looked to them as if she’d been there for a while, though her name had not been called or a greeter assigned to escort her to the Dead Ed classroom. She seemed disoriented and very much out of place.
“Hi. I’m Charlotte,” she said softly as she approached. “This is Prue and this is Pam.”
“Do you know where you are?” Prue asked.
“Has anyone come for you?” Pam inquired further.
The girl shook her head “No” silently.
“What’s your name?” Charlotte asked gently.
The girl looked up at them slowly. Her face was a familiar one. Prue and Pam’s jaws dropped in shock. Charlotte’s too. And for maybe the first time ever the three of them were speechless.
“I’m Darcy,” she answered.
Pam, Prue, and Charlotte quickly excused themselves and stepped outside the office.
“What the hell is going on here?” Prue asked in frustration.
“If that’s Darcy in there,” Pam continued, “Then who is that hanging out with The Wendys?”
“They’re both Darcy,” Charlotte said cryptically.
They were all thinking the same thing, but no one wanted to be the first to blurt it.
“What are we going to do about it?” Prue continued.
“What can we do?” Pam responded.
Before Charlotte could respond, the new Dead Ed classmates came walking toward them. Charlotte shushed Pam and Prue and signaled that they’d pick up the conversation later. They were struck by how young and naive the new girls appeared and realized they must have seemed the same back then. It was funny, and a little bit sad as well, how much a little knowledge and experience could change you.
“Hi, Charlotte,” Mercury Mary called out. “Remember us?”
“Sure, Mary,” Charlotte said. “These are my friends Pam and Prue. Ladies, meet Mercury Mary, Toxic Shock Sally, and Scared to Beth. “
With the niceties out of the way, Charlotte hit on an idea.
“Hey, girls,” Charlotte asked, “would you mind doing us a favor?”
“Nothing dangerous, is it?” Scared to Beth asked.
“Not at all,” Charlotte said.
“Okay, then,” Sally agreed, stifling her tremors for the moment.
“There is a girl named Darcy sitting in the office,” Charlotte said. “She’s a little lonely. Would you mind hanging out with her for a while?”
Pam and Prue instantly caught Charlotte’s drift.
“Maybe find out more about her,” Pam added. “You know, how she got here.”